Giannis Restaurant Aruba — Restaurant in Aruba

DONT BOTHER!We are recurring visitors of Aruba. However, being from an authentic Italian family who cooks authentic Italian food, I would warn all who seek to eat here. My husband and I chose Giannis because it was late and we had not eaten. We had a 1/2 hour wait, and they chose to stick us in a corner against a wall as wait staff wore a path past our table as they went in and out of their area. 1st issue we had, our waitress didn't smile, but she needed to upsell, so she came to the table with sparkling water trying to get you to buy it? If I want sparkling, I'll ask for it. 2nd issue, not all dishes have pasta? and no bread is served with your meal. WTH? If the owners are true Italians, they would never even think of such practice. I make Italian bread and know how inexpensive it is. Besides, what should your patrons do? Use a soup spoon or pay more? Trust me when I say everyone is thinking the same thing (I just finished reading reviews and your ridiculous responses). So, back to our meal against a wall. We chose to order the fried Calamari as well as 2 orders of Frutti di mare. The Calamari was served, and the first thing we noticed was the horrible dreaded chew. You know that wonderful rubber feeling between your teeth that is insanely tough. That was when our waitress became MIA as I was choking on it. My husband hates a scene, but he couldn't even eat it with its overcooked texture. When our dinners came out, they looked fine, and the first thing I noticed was the missing Calamari. Oh, wait! There it is..in tiny chopped lil pieces. I guess they haven't nailed the cooking of a rubber ring yet. Then I look, and there's a busted muscle shell right on top and empty. I checked the pasta and the lil guy must have jumped ship. The server finally comes over, and I tell her I'm missing a muscle. Rightly so at these overpriced gouging options. She said she'd replace it. My husband began eating ahead and said that his food and especially his shrimp was bland. I then took a small bite off one of the 2 shrimp received. My shrimp was exactly the same, tasteless. I then tried my pasta, tasteless. No garlic, No basil, no aromatics whatsoever! My waitress again, MIA. I stopped another server as they wore a path next to us anyway and asked him if he could add some garlic basil, tomato base? Everything this dish is void of. I explained the seafood is bland and the pasta matched. He said they could redo the dish, I joked and said preferably without the bad cooked broken muscles and rubber Calamari we choked on. By then, our server finally showed up and tried getting me to order something else. I then told her I wanted absolutely nothing out of this place. Besides, this is a woman who would dare try to have you throw cheese on an authentic Italian seafood dish? Italians don't put cheese on seafood ! I told my husband to finish what he wanted to because I was so done with this 3 ring circus who's worried more about the show and dance vs. what's being served. The waitress then had the audacity to try and hand us dessert menus? As if! I guess she forgot that I never touched my food. When she brought the check, she stated that they were only charging for 1 meal, and they removed mine while acting like she did us a favor? I told her, wow that must be huge for you!. We paid the check and I took delight in filling out tip with a big fat 0 as anyone would and should do when being treated like trash. Maybe now she'll understand what a crappy attitude and no smile gets her. To the chef! The first rule! TASTE YOUR OWN FOOD! The 2nd rule. NEVER, I MEAN NEVER SEND A PLATE WITHOUT CHECKING IT! If you tasted it, you'd know it was bland starchy garbage and shouldn't be served. If you checked the dish before sending, you would have seen the busted shell as well as it being empty. The dish should have been done over. It could have also been a bad muscle. To the owner, don't bother responding to me. Obviously, I've read your responses here, and you should be ashamed of how you've responded and excused all the disgusting food issues....

The food was pretty good but not worth the price and the service was flat out bad. Came here with a party of 8, all locals except me and my sister who insisted we come here to try the cheese wheel pasta despite our family on the island trying to dissuade her. One party member was running late and we told the waitress that we were waiting for her to order food but ordered a pitcher of sangria in the meantime. The sangria was great. We later ordered another pitcher as it was popular and worth the price of $55 since we got about 5 glasses put of it. Despite telling the waitress we were waiting for someone she came over several times asking if we were ready and she was obviously getting increasingly impatient. When we were ready to order the waitress did not tell us the specials or anything. I asked specifically since I had been here once before and knew they had specials. We saw people with some kind of prosciutto appetizer and thought it was maybe a special but she didn’t mention it. I ordered the bruschetta ruccola thinking that this was that appetizer that I was seeing. When she brought out the ruccola I was disappointed to find it was not that delicious app I was seeing. The waitress gave me attitude when I was confused about this and said “that’s the burrata” but there was no burrata on the menu! The bruschetta rucolla was good, we still ate it, but i was definitely disappointed. For dinner a few people did the cheese wheel pasta with a side of meatballs, I did the bolognese and two people split a chicken alfredo pasta. The cheese wheel pasta was pretty good, I think for the price they could have had a bit more a show with them tossing the pasta, there was barely any flames or anything. But taste-wise, I thought it was very good. One person said it was “too salty”, and it was fairly salty from the cheese but me and the others liked that. The meatball was okay, it was one very large meatball. Personally I would skip it. My bolognese was pretty good. The Parmesan crisp on top really added a lot to the flavor but overall the dish was fairly average. The carbonara was creamy and the chicken in it was ok, but like my bolognese it was just average. For these prices I expect at least above average, if not great. I should also note that everything took forever! We ordered around 7:20 and we did not get out of there until past 9. The restaurant itself is very nice, we were sat outside which could be very warm unless you are seated near one of the fans. I was comfortable and the surroundings were nice. The bus-people were very nice and attentive bringing us fresh water and ice often. When we got our bill however the waitress gave us a hard time, messing up some items on the bill and disputing it. Overall, despite the waitress dampening our moods, Gianni’s is fine. Is it the best Italian on the island? No. Is it the worst? Far from it. Is it worth the price? Definitely not, but I won’t judge people for being in lured in by the flaming...

Dec2023: 4⭐: I could recommend this location for a dinner visit. After 2 years, we returned to this same restaurant to enjoy a Christmas dinner in the early afternoon. We had a 3:00 p.m. reservation and we were not seated until 3:30 p.m. we were seated on the patio and we waited until about 4:00 p.m. before someone came over to the table to ask, had we been waited on or had someone come to the table. People that had come in well after us at 4:00 were receiving their appetizers and we still had not been brought any water for the table. The waiter came over to the table and said that he would get somebody to come over and wait the table. Apparently, no one volunteered so one of the managers came over to wait the table. He gave us excuses for the failures instead of an apology for the failures. We placed our order for the appetizers and the main entree for the evening. The appetizer arrived with the salads and was very tasty. Each of our dishes came out prepared well and was hot. On several occasions we had to wait for someone to come over and replenish our drinks. It seemed that we were sitting in an area that was the dead zone for the servers and now the manager. I expected more because of my first visit to this high-end restaurant and I got less. These restaurants are taking advantage of the tourists and the money we save all year to spend here.

July2021:5⭐: I would recommend this location for an evening visit. I decided to come by this location with my spouse for an evening meal after leaving the Aruba Hilton Resort Hotel in search of dinner candidates. As usual, we checked out several high-quality locations in the immediate vicinity. We settled on this location after talking with the host and finding that we would be seated even without a reservation at the time we arrived, about 5pm on a weekday. We were quickly seated and greeted by the staff. Our server soon came over and t our drinks and appetizer orders promptly. The drinks and appetizers came to the table and they were accurate and tasty. I noticed that the virgin strawberry drinks that we received, were blended well without large chunks of ice and were accurately flavored as virgin frozen drinks should be in my opinion. I took note that the salad was fresh and crunchy. The parmesan was fresh-graded. The Caesar dressing was premixed with the salad. I also noticed that the croutons were fresh and appear to be produced by the restaurant. We received a basket of garlic bread. We ordered one item, the lobster ravioli, off of the daily specials list given to us...